I was born. When I was 23 I started telling jokes. Then I started going on television and doing films. That’s still what I am doing. The end.

When you’re young, you look at television and think, there’s a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that’s not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want.

But I did ‚Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure.‘ They made a cereal out of it, so once you’ve had a cereal, it doesn’t get much more surreal than that. Surreal cereal.

Editing is now the easiest thing on earth to do, and all the things that evolved out of word processing – ‚Oh, let’s put that sentence there, let’s get rid of this‘ – have become commonplace in films and music too.

Brad will tell you. He puts a movie on, I’m asleep in 10 minutes. I have no patience. But the kids love action movies with comedy, Jackie Chan and all that.

Well, Howard Stern has been doing his impression of me for years. It doesn’t really bother me.

The most watched programme on the BBC, after the news, is probably ‚Doctor Who.‘ What has happened is that science fiction has been subsumed into modern literature. There are grandparents out there who speak Klingon, who are quite capable of holding down a job. No one would think twice now about a parallel universe.

I think it’s brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I’ve ever seen is called television – but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent.

If my films don’t show a profit, I know I’m doing something right.

I look just like the girls next door… if you happen to live next door to an amusement park.

The greatest thing about being a comedian is knowing other comedians. And you get to talk to them. Its the most fun.

Not bragging by any means, but I could have done a lot of other stuff as far as working in films go and working in television… I had chances to do that stuff, but I like baseball, I really do.

Wit is the lowest form of humor.

We participate in a tragedy; at a comedy we only look.

My comedy is different every time I do it. I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I think television has had a vast, unbelievable impact on us.

None of the films I’ve done was designed for a mass audience, except for ‚Indiana Jones.‘ Nobody in their right mind thought ‚American Graffiti‘ or ‚Star Wars‘ would work.

Only one in four jokes ever works, and I still can’t predict what people will laugh at.

I’m not offended by all the dumb blonde jokes because I know I’m not dumb… and I also know that I’m not blonde.

To be honest with you, when I got into this I never thought about reviews. I never thought about what people would say about me. I was just a young guy who was excited to become a comedian and an actor and I just wanted to get to do what I got to do.

Doing stand-up is like running across a frozen pond with the ice breaking behind you. I love it because it’s dangerous.

I don’t need therapy. I’m not going to see a therapist; comedy acts as my therapy. I put my problems out there. I talk about them. I talk about everything before anybody has a chance.

Almost anything can be funny if said the right way – but it has to be said the right way.

A lot of times, you could play me just the laughs from my set, and I could tell you, from the laugh, what the joke was. Because they match.

On TV the people can see it. On radio you’ve got to create it.

That’s when it becomes a business. When you’ve been public a long time, when it’s a career. You do certain films, you sell them.

When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the princes of greed. He said, ‚Look, here’s what happened.‘

The aim of a joke is not to degrade the human being, but to remind him that he is already degraded.

I’m never gonna step away from stand-up. I can’t. That’s what got me where I am, and that’s also my muse. That’s how I stay level-headed. That’s what keeps me going.

‚Young Indiana Jones’ was one of the happiest times I ever had, so I love television.

I learned from the guys before me – Bill Cosby, Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock, Richard Pryor, just to name a few. These are guys that let it all hang out. What they lived is what they took to the stage.

Comedy’s about opening up and being unique, but to a point where the audience can relate to what you’re saying.

I hate to mention age, but I come from an era when we weren’t consumed by technology and television.

I knew by heart all the dialogue of James Dean’s films; I could watch Rebel Without a Cause a hundred times over.

What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.

I absolutely want to have a career where you make’em laugh and make’em cry. It’s all theater.

Friends applaud, the comedy is over.

To me, comedy is just twisting reality. It’s commenting or observing or twisting life.

Remember that no relationship is a total waste of time. You can always learn something about yourself.

When I was born in 1920, the auto was only 20 years old. Radio didn’t exist. TV didn’t exist. I was born at just the right time to write about all of these things.

Comedy just pokes at problems, rarely confronts them squarely. Drama is like a plate of meat and potatoes, comedy is rather the dessert, a bit like meringue.

I’ve got a great sense of humor, and if I’m able to say or do something in a movie that people feel like they want to repeat, that’s hugely flattering.

I know some of the best Dolly Parton jokes. I made ‚em up myself.

When I’m being funny, I try not to offend. I don’t think much of what I’ve done has been in really ghastly taste. I don’t think I have embarrassed many people or distressed them.

When you’re coming up with new material, it’s not always gonna be good. The only way to learn is for it not to get a laugh, so you can adjust it and come back the next day to see if it’s working right. Next time, you might get a different laugh. You’re constantly rebuilding.

I make fun of situations and try and find the humor in things, but it’s never at the expense of the other guy.

I hate the past – especially my own past.

I never even thought of myself as deadpan until someone wrote an article about me about a year after I was doing comedy. There was a paper called the ‚Boston Phoenix,‘ and someone wrote a description of what I was doing and that’s where I first saw ‚deadpan.‘

I know I’m more on television, and I’m more recognisable than maybe even the players because they run and train, but I just stand there, and my face does all these funny things that everyone can see all the time.

I like to use the hard times in the past to motivate me today.

I can get where some scientists would say comedians are crazy. What you have to understand: A lot of comedians are dealing with a dark passion. A lot of these are guys coming from a tumultuous life, including myself. Some people need outlets, a way to express yourself.

In comedy, my strengths are improvisation.

The secret to humor is surprise.

I had a great time being a salesman because of the pitches that I gave when I was selling shoes. However, I don’t think I’m as well versed in shoes as I am in comedy. Being a salesman was all about being a people person, and I enjoy being around people. I also love talking to people – which is why I think I did so well.

To change ones life: Start immediately. Do it flamboyantly.

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.

Films and television and even comic books are churning out vast quantities of fictional narratives, and the public continues to swallow them up with great passion. That is because human beings need stories.

Most of the stuff I do on the show comes out of me just trying to make my friends laugh.

I now have two different audiences. There’s the one that has been watching my action films for 20 years, and the American family audience. American jokes, less fighting.

I’m spending a year dead for tax reasons.

In general my children refuse to eat anything that hasn’t danced in television.